The Garden as Gymnasium
Greenhouse as Parthenon
1. Eat breakfast. “A study conducted by the US Navy found that eating breakfast daily helped boost the metabolisms of its personnel by as much as 10%.” Not eating breakfast makes our bodies wimpy. Our metabolisms need a kick-start in the morning. Fresh fruit and yogurt is a good combo, even better if the fruit is grown locally, better still if you’ve grown it yourself.
2. Do a lot of walking & get on the bus. “Researchers found that people who switched from driving everywhere to using a light rail system lost an average of 6 pounds a year.” Well, we think this would work just as well with buses. To us, it just makes good sense to use public transit as much as possible: there’s lots of walking to and fro, time to read or text while someone else drives, time to plan your garden and think about the ounces you’re shedding day by day, by day, by day.... Hey, it’s your stop. Quit dreaming, get off the bus and get to work!
3. Drink 2 cups of black coffee, black. Sounds good. And it is. “A study in the Journal of Physiology and Behavior found that drinking 2 cups of coffee of black, caffeinated coffee can boost your metabolism by 16% compared with the decaf kind.” Combine this suggestion with #1 & #2. Dyno-mite! Just plan your bus trip & coffee drinking so you don’t have to pee in (or on) transit. Oh, if coffee upsets your stomach, drink green tea. It has a similar effect.
4. Work like a maniac early in your garden workout. Doing some flat-out hard work in your garden first— like digging in your green manure at a good clip for 10 or 15 minutes— can really give you a leg up on burning fat. Don’t overdo it, though. Push yourself a bit... but not to macho or femmo excess. After the intense 10 or 15, ease up and relax into your other garden duties, remembering that researchers say “the high-intensity after-burn seems to carry over into the lower intensity period, increasing overall fat burn.”
5. Drink cold water. German researchers found that “your metabolism can increase as much as 30% in the 10 minutes after you drink a cold glass of water. Why? ... researchers speculate that your body burns more calories as it tries to warm the water.” Hmmm... their speculation aside, have some cold water when you work up a good sweat in your garden, after your ride on the bus, your two cups of coffee and a good pee. You’ll be a calorie burning machine.
6. Douse your food in hot sauce. You can and should put that s!$t on everything! According to researchers, capsaicin, the spicy compound found in the white membrane of hot peppers like jalapenos and habaneras, “can rev up your metabolism and torch somewhere near an extra 50 calories.” So grow more hot peppers and use them in stir fries, soups and baked dishes. Splash more hot sauce on your dinners. Make more salsa (just go easy on the chips). In fact, incorporating more spices into our food not only revs up the metabolism; a more spicy diet cleanses your system and helps to protect it from cancer-causing free radicals. Check out the Sloan Kettering cancer research website for more detailed info on the subject of herbs, spices and health:
http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/about-herbs-botanicals-other-products
We read an article in December 30, 2012 issue of the Vancouver Province titled 25 Ways to Cut Fat in 2013, and got to thinking about gardening as exercise. And guess what? You can consider your vegetable garden your gym. Further consider that the food you grow is just the right fuel for the gymnastic activities you do in your garden.
What follows is our distillation of 25 Ways to 10.
All sentences enclosed in quotation marks in our piece below have been taken from the original article.
Read on, green and future-lean brothers and sisters.
7. Go organic. Some of us have been saying this for what seems like forever! “Canadian researchers found that people with the highest levels of chemicals found in pesticides were more likely to have slower metabolisms.” Hmmm... could be additional factors contributing to slower metabolisms in these folks. Anyway, just go organic; and even better, grow your own. You’ll feel better, maybe even look better. You might even drop some poundage what with the high/low- intensity exercise, cold water, coffee, spicy-sauced organic food, and the riding the bus all over the place attributes of your new lifestyle.
8. Fuel up on fibre. “Digesting fibre can help you burn 30% more calories, according to a study in the Journal of Nutrition.” We assume this means burning 30% more calories than someone else who had a meal equal in calories to yours but without fibre. Compare, for example, a relatively fibreless cheese omelette, bacon, white toast, butter and a milk shake meal, with its caloric fibre-rich equivalent of organic chicken vegetable stir fry, whole grain bread, humus and cold water. The bottom line: just eat more vegetables.
9. Increase physical activity outside of your garden. Well, if you’re actively applying points 1 through 8, you won’t really have to go to a gym. Besides, the bacteria that you’ll encounter (and work with) in your garden are much more benign than some of those you can come in contact with at the gym.
10. Here comes the sun. And we say, “It’s alright.” Our bodies make vitamin D from sunlight. Isn’t that a wonderful thing? We actually convert solar energy in our bodies, almost like plants do. “The University of Minnesota found that people who had higher levels of vitamin D were able to lose more weight on calorie-reduced diets than those people who had inadequate levels.” Get out in the fresh air even more.
In Conclusion.
Have breakfast with black coffee. Get on the bus. Walk around everywhere. Make a living. Have a fibrous, organic lunch. Work in your garden (like a maniac at first, then slow up). Drink some cold water. Get on the bus again. Go home and have a spicy dinner of fibrous, organic something. And oh yes, have a glass or two of nice red wine, make a little love and get a good night’s sleep.
You’ll feel brighter & lighter. Life is good.
Peace
